A Companion for Owls: Being the Commonplace Book of D. Boone, Long Hunter, Back Woodsman, & c. (Hardcover)

by Maurice Manning (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
*Starred Review* With this masterful interpretation of the quintessential American pioneer, Manning raises the ante for all future practitioners of one of the most fruitful kinds of long poem-sequence: the biography-in-poems. Robert Peters' treatments of Shaker founder Ann Lee (The Gift to Be Simple, 1975), explorer Elisha Kent Kane (kane, 1986), and others focused on their subjects' psychology. Joan Murray's Queen of the Mist (1999, about Annie Taylor, the first person to ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel), Jean Nordhaus' The Porcelain Apes of Moses Mendelssohn (2002), Sharon Chmielarz's The Other Mozart (2001), and Robert Cooperman's Keats sequence, Petitions for Immortality [BKL Ap 15 03], are dramatic and historical. Manning's portrayal of Daniel Boone, however, is philosophical. The semiliterate adventurer and small-time entrepreneur Boone is, per Manning, the ideal unselfish American individualist and the embodiment of that figure so earnestly admired by literary romanticism, the natural man. This may sound like the recipe for a dull read, but the individual poems, even at their most ruminative (in the opening section, "Meditations"), are exceedingly tangible and exciting, referring constantly to the material world and bodily existence and further grounded by genuine biographical events. Moreover, the most speculative aspects of Manning's enterprise, on Boone's possible inspiration of the English Romantics, appear only in an appended essay, which, however, readers ignore at their loss. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

PRAISE FOR THE POETRY OF MAURICE MANNING

"A fresh and brilliant talent."-W. S. Merwin

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (September 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151010498
• ISBN-13: 978-0151010493
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #808,789 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real McCoy, October 21, 2004

By	Eric Reiberg (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Perhaps I'm a dash sycophantic but, "A Companion for Owls" should contend for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. The previous reviewer must have abandoned his childhood fantasies long ago, because to give one star to this new volume points to a distinct lack of imagination. If at some point in your life you have not fantasized about being a Daniel Boone, an American alone on the frontier, surviving on wits and rifle alone, I pity you. There are few characters as quintessentially American as Boone, and Manning does a superb job issuing a voice to his persona. Because Boone spent so much of his life alone, there are great oppurtunities to fashion words for him, but also great peril if too many liberties are taken with the character. We all find a precious poetry in solitude, but rarely can it be translated to the page without it being cloying or inaccessible. Manning has found that solitude, but also a rustic sympathy that makes Boone terribly inviting. This volume is not dull. It is long, but also, comprehensive. It is prayer, memory, lamentation, regret, discovery, joy, selfishness, pain, humility, nature, urban encroachment, and most of the poems are great successes. Only 2 or 3 seem superfluous or misconceived. The end notes are a true joy. If every poet included such copious notes about their work people might not find poetry so impenetrable. And if every poet wrote verses so bright and well honed as Manning, they might not need end notes in the first place.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars black powder reading., June 11, 2007

By	Thomas Scott Craig "squidly" (bangkok thailand) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

i am not a reader of poetry ...in general.... i stumbled across this at my local library and love it... i bought 4 copies from amazon and my friends are getting one.. gives you just a hint of the mind set of early frontier free thinking men (women)....

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Creative Premise, Uneven Results. , January 2, 2006

By	choiceweb0pen0 (Lafayette, LA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I wanted to enjoy Maurice Manning's second book more than I actually did. While the premise of a series of poems based on Daniel Boone's life is fascinating, the poems themselves start to break down, about mid way through the book until they seem overly focused on delivering information as if Manning simply wanted to include more of the research and especially the letters section are just that, letters. It's less important, at least to me to stick to the historical facts alone, though historical figures can often be more interesting than any purely fictional characters. Anyway, the last few poems almost make up for the letters as the poems return back to actual poems. Read this collection for the first and last section of poems.